


How Fitting

by orphan_account



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Jjbek, M/M, Super Suits, a short thing, based on an art i did, but no one else will do it eh, i know I'm trash writing for my own art, otabek is a little bit of a conspiracy theorist or a little wiser than his years you decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 10:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: JJ Leroy is the loudest bit of evidence that the superhero system wants to be seen as a meaningless circus, but he's not worth a second look to Otabek, not when he and Yuri are busy digging behind that facade to see if there's more than expensive action figure lines at stake. Except after they get suit fittings, in which case Otabek might trade a second look to get a good laugh out of whatever cheap and tasteless fashion they deck JJ out in.But if that's a good trade deal, then what happens might be the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, ever.





	How Fitting

“Your fitting session is tomorrow at 12:30 and there is no cancelling it,” Georgi sighs, swiping Otabek’s phone from across the table to check his calendar for the required information. He scrolls through Otabek's list of classes, intoning the schedule as if it's some religious mantra. Otabek grabs the phone back to stop the pointless monologue.

“You can’t avoid it. Mine wasn’t half bad, hey,” Mila says from beside Georgi, eating his fries with one hand and scrolling through her phone with the other. Georgi sighs, pushes his fries all the way over to her, and instead turns his own phone to selfie mode to reapply mascara.

“That’s because you look good in everything,” Otabek says to Mila, rather tonelessly.

Mila _hee-hee_ s as if she knows this is true.

“What are you trying to say?” Yuri, blonde with green eyes so sharp they could cut you, and a glower to shield them from doing so, says, sitting at Otabek’s side with his food long finished. Otabek thought for his first week at the Bouchard-Leroy Registry Academy that Yuri could be his protégé, but then he wisened up after Yuri revealed he was pretty good with computers and networks and APIs and VPNs (which Otabek was not). Therefore, they were potential partners in civil resistance, a.k.a. friends.

Otabek sighs, extendedly, and puts his finger on the table. This means he is going to say something. Whoever’s in the vicinity of this side of the large, skylit lunch hall (all 1s) turns to give him their attention. “I’ll tell you what I’m trying to say,” he says, with a bit of a grin, putting his finger in the air.

“Speech, speech,” Georgi calls. The possibility of some lunchtime theatre makes some of the 1s eager to turn from their phones.

Otabek, leaning back in his chair, standard leather jacket with undercut gelled back, puts forth his case:

“What _joke_ . . . decided that the fitting sessions existed to perpetuate the idea that supers are nothing more than real-life models for new lines of merchandise and posters . . . what _joke_ somehow assumed that we’re immature enough to be excited at the proposition of becoming another cog in the trash machine that is capitalism?” He leans forward, pauses, and looks at the crowd. Georgi raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. Mila coughs, hiding a laugh as she whispers _trash machine,_ so that Otabek can just hear.

“You heard him, a trash machine!” Yuri tirades at Otabek’s elbow, slamming his fist on the lunch table so his scraped-clean plate rattles.

A whole bunch of 1s down a table yell their assent just because it’s something to yell at, Otabek’s sure. From a couple tables over on the _other_ side of the room, a group of 2F girls are giving Otabek a look like he’s bubblegum on the sidewalk of life, each with perfect hair and iPhone 10s. He’s sure they’re sharing the results of their own fitting sessions amongst themselves. But on this side of the room with the 1s, he’s got the attention of everyone.

“If it is a _joke_ . . .” Otabek continues, giving a righteous pause to allow his audience to consider the facts. “ . . .  it is _not_ funny to those who have resisted the sugar-coated apathy that is the supers department, to those who are still struggling to uphold the integrity that the department was first founded in and has managed, disappointingly . . . to abandon!” he concludes, punching in the consonants of the words he wants to emphasize.

Of course, during his little speech, the lunch hall supervisor has started to make her way over from the far side of the room where she’s been talking with a chef at the order counter; all the 1s turn to look, and then turn back and begin applauding to cover the noises of enforcement approaching. Otabek nods demurely at the clamoring crowd, knowing in a few minutes he’ll be seated in someone’s office for the newest of his tongue-in-cheek, heretical speeches. Georgi taps his cutlery together. Phichit starts videoing from the end of the table as the supervisor gets closer, looking stormy with her gaze trained on Otabek. Yuri crawls under the table.

Otabek lounges back in his chair. Giving the odd speech here and there is amusing and not altogether that far-fetched to be honest (not that he’d tell any of the instructors). He doesn’t mind a talking-to, and it won’t be that severe. They’ll have to force him into it, though. Maybe he’ll be lucky enough to miss most of Introduction to Power Classes.

There’s a new Mitski album out today he wants to get someone to download for him (probably Yuri). He’ll then be too busy listening to attend his fitting session tomorrow: if only the Academy staff thought so too. If he ever makes it through the three years, if he’s even fit to be Centerline, much less Frontline – _then_ he’ll worry about getting a suit. But these fitting sessions? True child’s play. Everything here has been so far, to him. Stupid suits. Won’t catch him in any color brighter than olive green.

Yeah, he’s heard rumors about kids who didn’t want to play by the rules and what happened to them. And they’re long past the age when security technology was still running to catch up with supers themselves. But Otabek figures they’ll kick him out for something minor and he’ll be free-ish for life. See, he never wanted to be here. An illegal, off-the-grid super – yeah, that’s what he would like. But, security technology. The supers department and their registry and programs. So this is how he’ll live instead. Cheat the system as much as he can’t.

Unless he _can,_ unless there’s something to be learned that isn’t supposed to be learned. That’s why Otabek makes speeches, exerts himself to make a bit of noise, a bit of trouble. Besides the fact that the theatrics might pose some legitimate questions at their core, people suspect something if you’re too quiet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

No matter how many bodies willingly participate in the supers registry system, there is one _some_ body who is the most willingly trapped and deceived of them all. Thinks that the supers department is truly working for international unity and public wellbeing without any hidden motives, is all too eager to follow every rule and step in the book that’ll churn each kid out into their pre-defined societal role. Of course he is, because his parents were the _poster_ children of the surge in acceptance for the supers department’s registry and all this. Everyone knows them, why, their Heroes of Tomorrow foundation built this school: Alain and Nathalie, the first of the Frontliners.

Otabek ignores, ignores _ignores_ Jean-Jacques Leroy as much as he possibly can, which is very much.

He sits across the classroom from the loudmouth. He’s never running the track or swimming or doing weights at the same time. You can usually hear JJ, as he’s colloquially called, from a half a mile off, so as soon as that alarm starts to sound, Otabek likes to move the other way. He and Yuri are united in a common disdain for the 1, who acts like he’s in Frontline already (granted, he probably is). They’re all 1s, after all, but next year’s 2F clique is already taking shape, centered around JJ. It was probably just like this when his older twin sisters went through a couple years ago.

Currently, Otabek can’t think of a use for JJ that would be worth the trouble interacting with him, so he and Yuri have mutually agreed to ignore the blindest of the blind. However, it seems Yuri took ‘ignore’ as meaning more like ‘challenge and pick on him whenever you can’ because Yuri did something with a rotten zucchini and then, over the past couple of weeks, JJ and Yuri take whatever chance they can to debate and compete and pick at each other. Otabek sort of admires Yuri for it, but at the same time, seems like a waste, on that one.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next day, at lunch time, some other 1s who probably don’t wish to attract the kind of attention Otabek’s drawn from the powers-that-be are quietly showing each other the pictures of their fitting results. See, you’ve hardly accomplished anything after 2 weeks of your first year in the Registry Academy, but they throw candy at you in the form of fake super suits. They have merchandisers-in-training at some other supers department facility come up with designs that’ll sell on action figures for 8-year-olds and video games for 10-year-olds and clip it on you and the hologram makes it look like you’re wearing the suit. Of course they don’t physically make it, because you’re not worth that. But they let you take the screenshots and show your friends once you’re done. Also put you through paces so they can do 3D capture and save some work on the next big money-generating whatever they’re making. But, free pictures of looking like an idiot, so everyone loves it. Makes somebody high-up in the supers department bigger bucks than they’re already paying themselves.

Otabek loathes the idea of participating in this, even though his fitting session is supposed to be in 15 minutes, which Yuri has pointed out. Now, Mila is teasing him.

“You said mine looked good. Why won’t yours?”

Another 1 is leaning over her shoulder asking to see and thankfully distracts Mila. But then she shows the 1 her pictures and turns it to Otabek, who’s seen them twice already.

“Right?” she says. Otabek rolls his eyes a little bit. Mila’s class 1, elementals. Fire, at that. Pretty common. The suit is orange with a belt and round jewel at the waist and a circular (low) neckline. Yes, it’s comical by itself, but Mila makes it look good, even if it’s silly at the same time. Of course, Otabek admitted this, and she hasn’t gotten off his case.

 _SLAP!_ Yuri lunges over and bats Mila’s phone face-down on the table, narrowly missing the nutritionally enhanced mashed potatoes.

“Stuck up hag,” Yuri spits. Yuri is a treasure trove of unrefined insults, which, for now, is amusing, but may be a problem should they ever get into real trouble, which Otabek is quite hoping for. 

“Speaking of _stuck-up hags_ , _Jay-Jay_ ’s got his fitting session today,” Mila singsongs, reclaiming her phone and tossing her hair over to one side. Otabek stonily refuses to comment, as per his internal vow. Yuri goes _chah!_ and lays himself back on the bench at the table, doing something on his phone. The other 1 who came over to see Mila’s suit picture starts discussing JJ with her, debating his looks versus his attitude. Word is his looks are a tempting deal. As if they had a chance: he has a clamoring circle of admirers already. Otabek can’t verify the claim anyways. JJ’s not worth a second look, if he’s even worth a first.

“Planning anything?” Leo, another 1, who seems to be constantly sleepy, asks Yuri from a few seats down. Otabek checks the time on his phone, which is creeping closer to 12:30 and narrowing down his options for getting out of this in a proper way. He can’t just skip it. He would have to do something to defy the system. He would have to make a kind of demonstration. Or go in with some sort of device that would let Yuri and him later take a deeper look into what the Academy is doing. Too bad Yuri said he couldn’t hack in while they were doing the fitting, said it was going to be too locked up for a 15-minute time frame.

“Pfff, just seeing him strut around and show everyone the dumb suit should be rich enough,” Yuri snorts, which means that there’s not much he can pull on this occasion. Too bad. “He’ll probably come around to everyone and stick his phone in their face.”

Otabek grins at Yuri. “Seeing him willingly decked out in neon, or whatever they come up with?”

“Neon and more, bet they’ll make it extra hideous for _JJ Leroy._ ”

“I probably won’t be able to erase the picture from my mind.”

“You’ll want to, though!”

Otabek’s phone says 12:23. If he _has_ to go, maybe he’ll get the chance to personally intercept JJ on his way out and get the first look on how cheap this gruesome thing will be.

“If I leave now, I might miss the show-and-tell,” Otabek jokes, standing up to sling his jacket back on his shoulders, which has sloughed off during lunch: but he’s been too busy making fun to notice his internal JJ alarm started going off some moments ago. A good number of 1s jump up from surrounding tables and go rushing past Otabek, who immediately and correctly surmises JJ’s coming back through the west entrance to the lunch hall, so he turns to look just as everyone else is doing and he stares, and stands, and stares, as JJ’s greeted by the clamoring entourage. Because, look, this bitch!, they let him wear the clip and therefore the suit _outside of the fitting session,_ so here he stands just like a real hero might descend and greet civilians, holo costume on from head to toe.

It’s absolutely infuriating! It’s so infuriating that Otabek keeps standing and staring. He’s dropped his phone some moments ago. Now Mila and Yuri and Phichit are looking at _Otabek_ for some reason. Has it been that long?

“Otabek,” Yuri says sharply, kicking his legs with his beat up checker-pattern Converse.

“Hey!” Otabek says, managing to not fall over and kicking Yuri back blindly, because he’s still staring at JJ, who’s in profile right now, smiling and laughing with other 1s. Unfortunately, Otabek’s foot hits Yuri’s grated metal seat and not Yuri and he stubs his toe.

“Otabek, it’s just _JJ_ ,” Phichit starts, but Otabek just grips his foot fiercely and bites his lip and hops a little bit and keeps _staring_ at JJ. He has to stop. He knows it’s time to stop looking. He knows he is in very, very deep trouble by now.

JJ’s suit is a little bit obnoxious, just like JJ himself. Maybe that’s why they work really well together. Two large Js are in bold pink-red on a white base, the top ledge and hook forming neckline and beltline with a short, asymmetrical cape the same color off one shoulder. Where he’s standing, just a few feet in front of the wilting palm tree about in the center of the hall, he’s in a sunbeam coming through the skylight, and it shines on the top of his black hair and brightens his already bright blue eyes, like a hero or an angel or at least some sort of vision, because Otabek can’t believe his eyes or the flips his stomach’s making. Yeah, he _knows_ what JJ looks like (or has looked like), he’s cast some glances his way before, but this is something different.

How fitting is this: the most obvious piece of evidence that the supers department is putting on a propaganda front day after day is also the most gorgeous being Otabek’s ever laid eyes on?

And when JJ turns, presumably to head down the space between tables that runs north-south on the tiled floor to show himself off some more, smiling and beautiful with the bearing of someone great in that extraordinarily flattering holo-costume, Otabek has the damning feeling things are only going to get worse.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> haha this is a trash drabble especially because it's off my OWN ART haha well thanks for reading anyways i love you all and i'm still very much in jjbek hell someone help me


End file.
